


Fences Make Good Neighbors

by unbecomings



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22579483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbecomings/pseuds/unbecomings
Summary: “Is my dog in your backyard?” Emily blurts.
Relationships: Lindsey Horan/Emily Sonnett
Comments: 19
Kudos: 186





	Fences Make Good Neighbors

Bagel has a thing about digging.

Nobody told Emily that Bagel would have a thing for digging. She _knows_ that Bagel is a herding dog, and she has a lot of energy, and needs to chew things. She did her research, she has a billion toys for Bagel to chew on instead of her furniture or her shoes or her hands, but somehow she did not realize that Bagel was going to dig.

“She keeps digging in the carpet,” Hayley says, when Emily gets home from the gym, “or in the blanket, or in her bed.”

So Emily does the best thing she can think to do: she lets Bagel out into the yard while she showers. It’s fenced-in, there’s nothing to eat but dirt and grass, and Emily leaves her a chew toy and a tennis ball and a bowl of water.

She takes a twenty minute shower. When she gets out she peeks out the window to see that Hayley’s car is gone, and she takes the opportunity to walk around in her shorts and sports bra and shorts. It’s hot and Hayley is weird about turning the AC up in the house, and it’s not like anyone’s going to see her. Not that she would mind. She’s in pretty good shape. Maybe even great shape.

She takes the stairs two at a time and pokes her head out the back door, expecting Bagel to come bounding up when she calls. Instead, there’s nothing.

No dog. No tennis ball. Just silence.

“Bagel?” Emily calls, taking a step outside. “Bagel-- bitty? Bits?”

She steps into her slides and goes out into the yard to check behind the bushes, but her heart is sinking fast. She hasn’t had Bagel that long, but she knows that Bagel would have come to her by now if she was still in the yard. Bagel isn’t in the bushes or anywhere else, and when Emily starts to page the fence she understands why. 

There’s a hole. A Bagel-sized hole. 

“Fuck,” Emily mumbles. 

She reaches for the top of the fence and pulls herself up so she can peer over the top. There’s a tree in the way, so she drops back down to her feet and strides the length of her own yard, heading to the street and ringing her neighbors doorbell before thinking about it. 

By the time she remembers she’s not wearing a shirt it’s too late. She can’t run and get one, or she’ll look like she was ding-dong ditching. She’s already going to look like a freak, and she doesn’t want to make it worse, and for all she knows Bagel is in the process of digging her way out of her neighbor’s yard and will be gone in minutes. So she waits, crossing her arms, to see if anyone’s even home. 

The girl who answers the door is around Emily’s age. She’s y’all and blonde and really unfairly cute, and Emily uncrosses her arms and tries not to be self conscious about her clothes situation. 

“Um,” the girl says, looking Emily up and down, “can I help you?”

“Is my dog in your backyard?” Emily blurts. She can feel herself blush when the girl raises her eyebrow, and she backtracks hastily. 

“I’m your neighbor,” she says. 

“Yeah, I’ve seen you,” the other girl says, “why is your dog in my yard?”

“I don’t know if she is,” Emily says, “but can I check just in case? And then I’ll get out of your hair, I promise.”

Her neighbor gives Emily another long look before she shrugs and steps back. Emily steps into the house, laid out almost identically to her own, and follows the girl to the back door. She tries  
not to look too hard, tries not to intrude, but it’s hard not to notice some things. Like, it smells like lavender in this house. There’s a calendar of Lionel Messi on a wall.

Her neighbor’s yard is actually landscaped. It’s cute—there’s a little table and some chairs, and Emily immediately feels guilty when she sees a trail of mulch and tattered leaves. 

“Oh,” the girl says, as Emily reaches into a bush and plucks Bagel out, covered in dirt. 

“I’m so sorry,” Emily says, “I’ll pay for all of it, whatever she dug up.”

She carries Bagel under one arm and returns guiltily to her neighbor, who reaches out and scratches Bagel under her chin. 

“What’s your name?” she asks, and Emily starts to feel a little vindicated about her decision to walk around shirtless. 

“Emily,” she says, and her neighbor looks up from Bagel to give her a weird look. 

“The dog,” she clarifies, and Emily can see that she’s being made fun of, a little, but she’s not mad about it. It’s kind of cute, actually. She’s into it. 

“Bagel,” Emily says. 

“Bagel?” the other girl repeats. 

“Is that your name too?” Emily asks, “what a coincidence!” 

Her tall, hot, blonde neighbor rolls her eyes. She strokes the top of Bagel’s dirty head with her hand, and Emily tries not to notice how big that hand is but fails miserably. She’s too gay _not_ to notice. The girl’s nails are painted, but short enough that Emily does wonder, just for a second. 

“Lindsey,” the other girl offers, and just like that Emily’s in love. 

-

“I think she lives with her boyfriend,” is the first thing Hayley says when Emily tells her the story, and Emily tries to keep the disappointment off of her face. 

“I’ve never seen anyone,” Emily says.

“You didn’t notice her at all until Bagel dug up her yard,” Hayley points out. She’s cooking something that smells way better than Emily’s salad. Bagel is sitting behind Hayley’s feet, tail sweeping across the floor, as if she ever gets people food. 

“It was way too clean in there for a man to live in that house,” Emily says. 

“I see him like every other day,” Hayley counters, “We both leave around 5:30 in the morning. He’s kinda short, well dressed, brown hair. Keeps his beard trimmed, drives a hybrid. Seems like a nice guy.”

Emily doesn’t say out loud that she doesn’t believe it, but she can’t quite seem to buy it. Part of it is that she hasn’t had time to date or go out and flirt since her promotion three months ago, and she knows she’s unreasonably emotionally invested in Lindsey because she’s cute and tall and exactly Emily’s type. Part of her just can’t imagine Lindsey dating a guy at all, though. Especially not someone shorter than her. She’s made out with enough straight girls to know when there’s no connection, and she _knows_ they both felt something. 

“She was definitely checking me out,” Emily says, “that’s all I’m saying.”

“Bisexuals exist,” Hayley reminds her. 

“But you wouldn’t check someone else out,” Emily says, “because you have a girlfriend.”

“I might give you a weird look if you showed up without a shirt asking if your dog was in my yard,” Hayley counters. She drops a piece of plain spaghetti and Bagel gobbles it up before she can even start to reach for it. 

Emily scoops Bagel up and perches on a bar stool with the squirming puppy in her lap, salad long forgotten. She’s thinking about the way Lindsey looked at her, and if she’d classify it as ‘weird’ or ‘hot,’ or whether there’s a difference. If she’s being honest, it’s been a long time since anyone has looked at her for that long. She’s not even sure that she cares one way or another if Lindsey was judging her instead of checking her out.

“Maybe I’ll offer to mow her lawn,” Emily says, “with my shirt off and see if it was a weird look or not.”

“She’s twice your size,” Hayley says, “I think she can mow her own lawn.”

“We’ll see,” Emily says.

“You wanna mow our lawn first?” Hayley says, and Emily gets a horrible, brilliant idea.

-

It’s hot. She got lucky that it was hot enough for her to take her shirt off and not make it obvious she’s doing it to flex. 

“Just spray me please,” Emily says, “I don’t want to turn hot-dog colored.”

“Or you could wear a shirt,” Hayley says, “that’s always an option.”

“No,” Emily says, and Hayley sprays the cold sunscreen on the back of Emily’s neck, making her jump. Emily ties Bagel up on the front porch with a bone and drags the lawnmower out of the garage. It’s a Saturday at eleven in the morning, the perfect time to do this, and Emily finds she does feel a little bit of pressure to pull it off right. She doesn’t want to look like a douchebag, but she _does_ hope that Lindsey looks out her window.

She starts the lawnmower. It makes a horrible, violent noise that scares the shit out of Bagel, who yelps, and Emily has to twist around to quiet her. She can see Hayley watching her from the kitchen, and when they make eye contact Hayley waves, taking another bite out of the apple in her hand.

“I hate you,” Emily mumbles.

Mowing the lawn sucks. Usually she does it as quickly as possible and not particularly well; Hayley is better at it and has done it for the past two months running. Emily flexes her hands on the handles and turns to have her back to Lindsey’s house, starting a row in the other direction.

Every five feet the lawnmower makes the worst possible noise. Every time it does Bagel makes a corresponding and equally horrible noise. The fourth time Bagel does _not_ make the terrible noise, and Emily cranes her neck to check the porch, expecting to see her puppy chewing a bone happily in the sunshine the way she had imagined.

Instead there’s the leash and Bagel’s empty collar, and no bone. Emily curses and turns the lawnmower off, and when she spins around to face the street Lindsey is standing there on the sidewalk, holding Bagel under one arm.

There’s a guy in Lindsey’s driveway. He has an electric blue hybrid car that he’s hand-washing and Emily hates him and his ugly car immediately and intensely.

“Oh,” Emily says.

“Guess she likes me,” Lindsey says, turning her head to smooth her hand over Bagel’s ears, “more than she likes you.”

“More than she likes my lawn mower,” Emily admits. This isn’t how she expected things to go, but she can roll with a punch. She takes a deep breath and walks to Lindsey on the sidewalk, but she doesn’t reach for Bagel right away.

“That makes two of us,” Lindsey says, “that thing sounds, uh...dangerous.”

Maybe Emily flexes a little bit when she reaches out to take Bagel out of Lindsey’s arms. It’s worth it when Lindsey’s eyes linger on Emily’s biceps for a second longer than they need to.

“Linds,” the guy calls out from the driveway, “can you get my water bottle? It’s by the sink?”

Emily’s gaze flicks over Lindsey’s shoulder. Her boyfriend is wearing a tank top. His chest is hairy. Emily is doing her best not to judge, but her brain betrays her and tries to conjure up an image of them kissing, and it makes her faintly sick. 

“I can keep her inside with me,” Hayley pipes up from Emily’s other side. Emily startles, but she hands Bagel over guiltily. She feels like Hayley can tell what she was thinking. Hayley _always_ knows what she’s thinking. 

“Oh, hi,” Emily says, “um, Hayley this is Lindsey, Lindsey this is Hayley.”

“Presumably you,” Lindsey says, offering her hand to shake, “not the lawnmower.”

Bagel squirms under Hayley’s arm while she uses her free hand to shake Lindsey’s. They’re smiling at each other the way that dogs do, more like teeth-bearing and less like something that’s actually friendly. 

“Who, that?” Emily jokes, her voice cracking, “no, that’s Joel, he lives in the garage. Hayley lives in the house. Easy mistake to make though.”

“Funny,” Hayley says, rolling her eyes, and she disappears into the house with Bagel under her arm, leaving Emily alone with Lindsey on the sidewalk. 

“Linds,” her boyfriend calls out, “I am dying of thirst back here.”

“Coming,” Lindsey says, but she doesn’t take her eyes off of Emily, who’s sweating for another reason, or at least feels like she could be.

“Good luck with your lawnmower,” Lindsey says, and Emily could swear that she smirks before she turns away, back towards her house and her boyfriend.

Emily watches her go, and then, guiltily, she subjects herself to the torture of mowing the rest of her lawn.

-

“He’s cute,” Hayley says, out of nowhere. 

Emily looks up from the floor, where she’s on her hands and knees trying to pull Bagel’s favorite squeaky ball out from under the coffee table. It’s covered in drool and slippery, and Bagel has plenty of other things to play with, but she wants that ball. She’s been sitting there whining at the table for twenty minutes.

“Um,” Emily says, glancing at the TV screen where a full-size alligator is being zoomed in on, “if you’re into scales?”

“Lindsey’s boyfriend,” Hayley says, “he’s kinda cute. They’re cute together. I’d never seen both of them at the same time before.”

“All he said was to get him his water bottle,” Emily says, “I don’t see it.”

“You just wish you were him,” Hayley says, “but that’s fine.”

Emily doesn’t have a comeback for that. She ignores it, focusing instead on Bagel, and tells herself she’s going to forget about Lindsey. No matter how she feels about Lindsey’s boyfriend, he _does_ exist. She can’t deny that anymore, and it would be wrong to cook up some kind of plan to steal Lindsey away. It’s not like Emily has time, anyway. She has a good job and a cute dog and good friends and not a lot of free time. Certainly not enough free time to spend it thinking about her hot neighbor, and how big her hands looked when she was holding Bagel, and the way she looked Emily over not once but twice.

-

“Okay,” Emily says, “we’re gonna try this again.”

Bagel wags her tail, watching raptly as Emily holds her hand out to show how many treats she has in her hand.

“I will be right back,” Emily says, as if Bagel understands every word.

She’s trying to set up the backyard for the summer—digging their ratty patio furniture out from the shed, finding the fairy lights she wants to hang up before the weekend, when they’ll have a few friends over to grill and have some drinks. It’s not necessary to have Bagel outside with her, but if she leaves Bagel inside for too long without putting her in the crate she’ll get into the trash or something. And Emily hates crating Bagel. She’s put a bunch of rocks in the spot where Bagel dug under the fence before, and Bagel is tied up, so chances are slim that she’ll be able to get back into Lindsey’s yard, or out of their yard at all.

After each chair she drags out of the shed, she checks for Bagel. Bagel is always there, wagging her tail, minding her business. Emily even has the nerve to be proud of Bagel before she goes to get the table. It takes her a little longer, not so much because it’s heavy but because it’s awkward to carry. When she places it where she wants it and arranges the chairs, she turns around and Bagel is gone.

Again.

“Oh God,” Emily breathes. And then, more loudly, “Bagel?”

Her harness is empty. Her collar isn’t there, so at least wherever she is she probably has Emily’s address with her, but Emily’s heart rate kicks up thinking about the streets Bagel could run into, the bigger dogs, the coyotes--do they have coyotes?--and the people who might snatch her. She’s so cute, cute enough to kidnap.

“Bages?” Emily says, “Bitty?”

But she already knows Bagel’s not there and won’t come running to her. She can see where Bagel has, somehow, pushed all the rocks aside, and the rush of relief she feels when she realizes that Bagel’s not in the street or being eaten by a larger animal is tempered by the realization that her plan to avoid Lindsey now has a Bagel-shaped hole in it.

At least this time she’s wearing a shirt.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t retie her bun and straighten her clothes before she walked across to Lindsey’s place. She’d also be lying if she said she wasn’t nervous. She definitely shouldn’t be, and she definitely should be more embarrassed than anything else, but she _is_ nervous. Lindsey makes her nervous. It’s been so long since she’s let herself think long enough about a girl to make herself nervous. A girl with a boyfriend, who happens to be her neighbor, that Bagel can’t stay away from.

Lindsey shows up ten seconds after Emily knocks. She counts. It feels like a really long time, like maybe Lindsey isn’t home and Emily will have to come back later and just home Bagel’s still hanging around. Then Lindsey does answer the door, and Emily is hit with a lot all at once. 

Lindsey’s wearing a white t-shirt that doesn’t really fit her shoulders. (Why do her shoulders look like that?) The smell of cooking food is strong, but not as strong as the look that Lindsey gives her, one eyebrow quirked, her blonde hair falling over her shoulder. 

“Hi,” Emily says.

“You should really put your number on Bagel’s tag, not just your address,” Lindsey says.

Emily speaks without thinking. She can’t help it, she’s a serial flirt; her mouth moves a lot faster than her brain does, especially when cute girls are involved.

“Are you asking for my number?” she blurts. Lindsey’s eyebrows shoot up. Emily remembers Lindsey’s boyfriend and his tanktop and his stupid hybrid car and feels guilty immediately, but it’s already out, and Lindsey definitely heard her.

“Um,” Emily says, “anyway, I’m assuming you found her?”

Lindsey steps back, holding the door open, and Emily follows her inside. Inside her house where she lives with her boyfriend.

“I hope she didn’t tear anything up this time,” Emily says. She’s babbling because Lindsey hasn’t said a word since Emily hit on her, and it’s making Emily even more nervous than before.

“Nah,” Lindsey says, “she’s just been chilling. I think she smelled the food or something, I had the window open because it’s hot in here.”

Bagel is, in fact, chilling. She’s lying on the floor of Lindsey’s kitchen, and when she sees Emily she jumps to her feet and trots to Emily like she’s never done anything wrong in her life.

“Wow,” Emily says, taking a deep breath as she crouches to scratch behind Bagel’s ears, “what are you making?”

“I’m trying a tuscan chicken recipe,” Lindsey says, “my brother’s a chef so he never wants to cook when he gets home and I just kind of flipped to a random page in one of his cookbooks.”

“He lives with you?” Emily squeaks. She’s trying to be cool about it and failing completely. She’s moved on to rubbing Bagel’s belly, as Bagel has flopped onto her back in bliss. Lindsey has gone back to her cooking as if Emily’s just a guest in her home.

“Yeah,” Lindsey says, “it’s kind of weird to most people, but we’ve always been close, and it’s cheaper than living alone.”

“That makes sense,” Emily says.

It does make sense. In hindsight, maybe they even look a little bit alike. Unfortunately, it also means she’s thinking about Lindsey again, differently. And from the floor, her angle when she glances over at Lindsey is a _lot_. Her legs are long and tan and strong, the way her shoulders appear to be through her white t-shirt, and she’s not dating the guy she lives with, and she’s cooking an intricate chicken dinner and Bagel loves her.

Emily forces herself to her feet. She chews on her lips for a moment, trying to decide what she wants to say, and before she gets to a full sentence, Lindsey speaks again, over her shoulder.

“You can stay for dinner if you want,” Lindsey says, “I don’t think this’ll keep well as leftovers.”

-

Lindsey does not have a boyfriend. Or at least if she does, it’s not the guy she lives with. She makes a great tuscan chicken, though Emily still isn’t sure what that means even after she’s eaten it. They chat idly about nothing for the whole dinner, and it feels like a date, but Emily thinks that’s mostly because she wishes it was.

When she gets home, she has just enough courage to scribble out a note on a post-it, and the next morning when she leaves for work she sticks the note on Lindsey’s door, folded up so that a passerby won’t see it. Sure, Lindsey’s brother might, but Emily figures it’s worth the risk.

**here’s my number in case bagel bitty sneaks into your yard again. or in case you cook something you need help eating again. or just in case.**

-

“Sit,” Emily says.

Bagel tilts her head. She does not sit.

“You should invite Lindsey to our thing tomorrow,” Hayley says.

“_Sit_,” Emily says, gesturing. Bagel sits, extremely slowly. Emily bends down to give her a treat, ignoring Hayley to the best of her ability. Hayley leans over the back of the couch to watch, and to harass Emily further.

“Seriously,” Hayley says, “ask her out.”

“How?” Emily snaps, “she never texted me.”

“You didn’t tell her to text you,” Hayley says, “not really.”

“I was pretty obvious,” Emily argues. “Sit.”

Bagel sits. She gets another treat. Emily stands up straight and points to Hayley.

“Sit,” she says, and Hayley ignores her.

“You could just walk over there,” Hayley says, “you’ve done it before.”

“Maybe,” Emily says, but she knows that she won’t have the guts.

-

Their friends will be there in thirty minutes. Emily has not said a word to Lindsey, and Bagel has, somehow, managed to stay where she’s supposed to be all week. Just once Emily wishes Bagel would misbehave, but of course Bagel has decided to be perfectly obedient, and Emily doesn’t really have an excuse for reaching out to Lindsey, if she does. 

It takes her up until the last second to convince herself she doesn’t need an excuse.

“Do a shot with me,” Hayley says when Emily comes downstairs.

“Are you kidding?” Emily asks, “no, c’mon, I have to grill.”

“One shot,” Hayley says, “it won’t do anything to you.”

Emily only caves because she knows she’ll need it. Before she leaves she kneels to tie a red bandana around Bagel’s neck, and she holds Bagel’s little face in her hands and holds eye contact. Bagel doesn’t try to move, but she’s wriggling with how hard her tail is wagging.

“Please leave the bandana on,” Emily says, “do me a solid, Bitty.”

She makes up something about going out to the grill, then circles around to the front of the house and walks to Lindsey’s. It’s something she’s done enough times now that it feels familiar, but this feels different. 

It’s not just the fact that she has no excuse. It’s the fact that she’s in skinny jeans and a crop top and has bothered to put chapstick on. It’s the fact that she’s done all this at least partially because she wants Lindsey to notice. It’s the fact that she’s about to go from being Lindsey’s neighbor with the cute dog to being Lindsey’s neighbor who is definitely, actively trying to date her. Before she knocks, she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, conjuring up the way Lindsey had looked at her the last time she was there, the way Lindsey reached across the table to pluck a green bean off of Emily’s plate, the way Lindsey had cradled Bagel under one arm like she weighed nothing at all.

Lindsey does not open the door. Her brother does.

“Oh, hey,” he says, “I’m Mike, you’re the dog girl, right?”

“Human girl,” Emily splutters, “owner of Bagel.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, grinning at her, “Bagel’s mom. What’s up?”

Emily is about to make something up when Lindsey appears over Mike’s shoulder. She’s pretty significantly taller than him, which makes her pretty significantly taller than Emily. She’s wearing a blue tank top and it makes her eyes stand out.

“Get lost,” Lindsey says, and Mike takes a step back, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender before he does as she says. Emily might be imagining it, but she thinks Mike might be laughing at them when he goes, and that, combined with the slightest blush on Lindsey’s cheeks, gives her a little boost of confidence.

“Hey,” Emily says.

“Hi,” Lindsey says, “wow, I just realized this is only the second time I’ve seen you with a shirt on.”

“It’s like half a shirt,” Emily says, “it doesn’t count. Um, we’re having a thing tonight? Grilling and drinking. Not at the same time. Well, I’ll be--it’ll be cool. Safe. Very cool and safe. Wanna come?”

She cannot believe how stupid she sounded. She knows her face is bright red even before she finishes speaking. A smile starts slowly on Lindsey’s face, growing until she’s grinning from ear to ear. She definitely drops her eyes for a second, but it’s too fast for Emily to really be sure where they went.

“Cool and safe grilling and drinking?” Lindsey says, “my favorite pastimes. I’m in. What’s the dress code?”

“Shirts required,” Emily manages, “unfortunately.”

“Too bad,” Lindsey says, and Emily can’t say she disagrees.

-

Lindsey shows up with a six-pack of beer fifteen minutes into the party. Emily only sees her because she’s running inside to get more hot dogs, and she happens to be going back out into the yard at the moment Lindsey opens the gate. She’s wearing a loose gray t-shirt and she has a button-down tied around her hips that’s much longer than her jean shorts. Her legs are very long and tan, and Emily gets caught staring. She drags her gaze up to Lindsey’s face and Lindsey is staring at her, blinking. She doesn’t look uncomfortable, but she does look surprised. Maybe even nervous.

“I brought beer,” Lindsey says, holding up the six-pack.

“I will take one of those,” Emily says, and almost drops the hot dogs trying to yank one of the cans free, making both of them laugh. She feels guilty for checking Lindsey out, but only because Lindsey’s reaction wasn’t exactly what she expected. Lindsey is usually so confident that it’s really thrown Emily off now that she isn’t. It makes Emily worry about making a move, makes her want to backpedal and treat tonight like a party she’s invited a new friend to instead of an opportunity to get close to a girl she likes.

She goes back to the grill, beer in hand, and tries to forget how hot Lindsey looks. By the time she makes her way through a package of hot dogs and people start to dig into the food, the beer has mellowed her enough that her pride isn’t too wounded. She can be friends with Lindsey. She’ll get over her crush—she’s done it before. At least that’s what she thinks while she’s piling her plate high with potato salad and two hot dogs (with just ketchup- the one thing that makes Hayley threaten to disown her every time). When she turns around it’s a different story. 

Lindsey is on her hands and knees in the grass, holding onto the end of Bagel’s tug rope toy. Bagel has the other end in her mouth and is shaking her head violently, tail wagging like crazy as Lindsey talks to her and laughs. Her ponytail has come loose, loose enough that she has hair falling into her face, hair that Emily wants to tuck behind her ears. 

“God dammit,” Emily mumbles under her breath. As if on cue Lindsey stands up and smiles at her. 

“Can I wash my hands?” she asks, and Emily nods, gesturing to the house. 

She likes the idea of Lindsey in her house. She settles into a lawn chair by the door, watching her friends mill around the table with the food. Makenzy has picked a spot on the steps, and Bagel is trying to eat her chips. Emily watches for a second before she calls Bagel over, and Bagel sits at her feet, watching Emily take a bite of her hot dog. 

“Sorry man,” she says, “you can’t have any of this. It’s for your own good.”

Bagel whines, placing a paw on Emily’s knee. 

“Okay,” Emily says, “mostly for my good, so I don’t have to smell your rancid farts later.”

“Anyone sitting here?” Lindsey asks, and Emily almost chokes. _Of course_ Lindsey overhears that. As if she didn’t think Emily was a big enough freak to begin with. She’s looking at the empty lawn chair next to Emily’s, and Emily swallows hard, hoping the setting sun is hiding her blush. 

“No, go ahead,” Emily says, but Lindsey’s already taking a seat. 

“Her bandana is cute,” Lindsey says, after they chew in silence for a bit. 

“Thanks,” Emily says, “it’s mine, but I let her borrow it.”

Someone squeals. Emily looks up and Hayley’s girlfriend has her in a fireman’s carry, God knows why. Cait is holding the hose with the head aimed right at them, and Emily watches as Hayley gets a face full of water. She’s laughing when her girlfriend puts her down, though, and she leans up on her tiptoes for a kiss after. They’re cute together. Sometimes they’re too cute together. It might be part of the reason she got a dog, Emily realizes. She toys with one of Bagel’s ears with her free hand. 

“I have a confession to make,” Lindsey says. When Emily looks over at her, Lindsey looks sheepish. 

“Shoot,” Emily says.

“I definitely thought she was your girlfriend,” Lindsey says, “the girl you live with.”

“Hayley?” Emily squeaks, and Lindsey turns away. Emily can tell she’s blushing and desperately wishes she could see the color rising into Lindsey’s cheeks. 

“Is that why you didn’t text me?” she realizes out loud, and Lindsey drops her head back against the top of the lawn chair, laughing quietly. 

“I thought your brother was your boyfriend,” Emily admits, and Lindsey laughs again, this time louder. Emily loves Lindsey’s laugh. it’s goofy and unashamed and she wants to hear it again and again. 

“Gross!” Lindsey exclaims, “if I was into men I would at least date someone better looking than that, Jesus. He’s a troll.”

“No he’s not,” Emily says, “he looks like you. He’s cute.”

“You think I’m cute?” Lindsey asks, and its Emily’s turn to blush. 

“Why do you think I kept popping up with no shirt on?” Emily asks, and Lindsey grins at her, dimples and all. 

-

It’s late and a lot of people have gone home. Cait is playing Hayley’s guitar while Ellie and Hayley and her girlfriend try to make s’mores on the grill. Emily is laying in the grass, propped up on her elbow, throwing a tennis ball for Bagel. Lindsey, sitting next to her, has the last of the beers in one hand. 

It feels like a moment to remember. The smell of the grass, the way the warm and humid air clings to their clothes, the sounds of her friends laughing and the pleasant buzz of the alcohol make it feel like college—but better, like college but with her life figured out. 

Emily throws the ball again, but this time Bagel doesn’t bring it back to her. Instead she drops it in Lindsey’s lap, and Lindsey smiles. 

“She really likes you,” Emily observes. 

Lindsey throws the ball again and Bagel lopes after it, ears flopping. 

“I really like you,” Lindsey replies. When Emily doesn’t answer—can’t around the feeling in her chest—Lindsey looks down at her. “Is that weird?”

“I really want to kiss you right now,” Emily says, “is _that_ weird?”

“You should,” Lindsey replies, propping her chin in her hand. Emily leans up, her fingertips brushing against Lindsey’s jaw, and presses their smiling mouths together.

Bagel drops the ball between them and barks.


End file.
